mikeszekely

*Beats JB0 over the head with a GBA* If you had said that none of the Castlevania games since SotN were as good as SotN, you might have made a statement I could agree with. If you'd said none of the non-handheld Castlevanias were any good, I'd give you that too. But Circle of the Moon, Harmony of Dissonance, Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, and Portrait of Ruin were still all great games... among the best the GBA and DS have to offer. And I can't wait for Order of Ecclesia. I'm not interested in the fighting game for the Wii, where I think that Simon statue is from, anymore than the rest of you. But frankly, I think that there should be a law that says IGA can only do Metroidvanias from now on.

I was wondering. Thanks! Now if somebody could explain to me why Hasbro wouldn't give us Thundercracker, but are now in fact giving us a second Starscream, that'd be great.

$49.99. I never got him during Armada/Energon, but I think it's the exact same toy. He's huge; Deluxe Galvatron comes up to his knee, so I'd say the price is fair, and IIRC, what it went for originally.

I was at Toys R' Us today on a whim, since it was near a restaurant I met a friend for lunch at. Universe Unicron is out!

That's why I bookmarked John D's blog. Soon as that thing goes on sale, I'm buying. Hell, I'd buy it even if it doesn't come with a voucher for the download.

I posted my initial impressions on my blog, but I'll summarize by saying that yes, it has some bugs and other issues, but on the whole I'm finding it very fun. It might not be for everyone, but for 360 and PS3 owners, there's a demo out. If you like the demo, you'll like the game, and if you don't like the demo, well, to each his own.

It might depend on the publisher. When I worked at Gamestop, there were a couple of times we were directed to box up all but maybe one copy of a game and send it back. What the warehouse did with them after that is up to speculation, but I'd guess that they went back to the publisher. But I also know for a fact that maybe twice in the four years I was there, we were instructed to take brand new games, open them, and move them from new inventory to used inventory. In any case, Gamestop and some of the game publishers have a more complicated relationship than you might imagine. That's why Gamestop will occasionally push a game you know is crap. In fact, if things haven't really changed since I left, Gamestop and Activision are practically dating.

It's been all about Castle Crashers for me.

Finally! Although, September is getting expensive... and mostly on downloads. This, Castle Crashers, Megaman 9, and Ratchet & Clank for me. I can't complain, though. That's four great games for a lot less than the two disc-games I'm buying this month (Rock Band 2 and Force Unleashed). Factor in some downloadable content for Rock Band, though, and it's definitely an expensive month.

It's kind of amusing to see discussion about game reviews when I recently started a blog where I review stuff, games included. Maybe my method is different than the "professionals," but I don't take genre into account at all. In fact, I don't take any other game into consideration at all, unless it's to describe the basic gameplay elements. So, if I were to review, say, F.E.A.R, I wouldn't use Call of Duty as some kind of shooter benchmark to compare F.E.A.R to. My reviews are based totally on how entertaining I felt the game to be. If I loved playing it, regardless of a game's perceived innovation or lack thereof, I'm going to give it a positive review that might not jive with the mainstream. For example, I generally enjoy the Dynasty Warriors series, which is lucky to muster a 6 from most publications. Likewise, I sometimes don't care for games that the mainstream seems to love (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess). I don't believe that my reviews, or anyone else's, should sell you a game or not. I don't think they're useless, though. If you're on the fence, knowing what different people liked and disliked about a game might provide you with enough information to push your interest in one direction or the other. I can't say I've ever bought a game just because of a good review, but I know that mostly good reviews have helped me to make that final decision to shell out money for a game I was thinking about, or vice versa. But it's equally important to know your own gaming habits, and to know what kind of games you like (if you can't stand JRPGs, all the 10's in the world won't make you like the next Final Fantasy). And when it comes to reviews, it helps to know who you tend to agree with. I stopped reading EGM more or less because they only seemed to really like the games that are trendy to like, which meant that I loved a lot of games they didn't, while they were giving Halo 10's, and I've yet to enjoy a Halo game. Finally, for reasons already discussed here, I do think using a number scale is fundamentally broken (especially ridiculous ones where they have decimals to a 100th place... what's the difference between an 8.26 and an 8.27?). So, I've been using the tried-and-true letter grade scale. A is great, B is good, C is average, but maybe worth playing/watching, D is bad, and F is an insult to humanity.

How long? Lucifer in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne was so ridiculously hard that I seriously thought I wouldn't beat him even with levels almost in the 80's. I did eventually beat him, over two hours after I started fighting him. Not joking... I started around 4:00, thinking I had plenty of time. I had to pause to eat dinner with the wife, then wail on him for another hour after dinner.

What? It was still the highlight of the demo. Before you get the QTE, you have to beat on it first. Which I did by throwing Stormtroopers at it. And any game where you can throw Stormtroopers at an AT-ST is okay by me. But yeah, even the best games aren't for everyone. I didn't care for Halo, GTA bores me, and I haven't enjoyed a Zelda since A Link to the Past. Castle Crashers is fun though. If you have an Xbox 360, you should play it. And before anyone accuses me of being a 360 fanboy, I'll point out that I'm still eagerly awaiting WipEout HD. And for the Wii... well, I'm sure something will come out for it. Someday. Right?

Megaman's going to put an end to the brain-training genre? Okay, seriously, my love of Megaman games is no secret. The only reason I haven't been chatting up Megaman 9 is because I just assume you guys already know that I'm going to buy it. Potentially for all three consoles.

Why would they be joking? I had zero interest in the game, but the demo was great. I wound up reserving and paying it off already.

Yeah, until I bought her a laptop, which she not only takes with her, but leaves a TV tray in the bathroom to set it on.

Heck, that's where I get some of my best gaming in, free of the wife's nagging.

It's just a matter of budgeting your time properly with handhelds. I mean, what are you busy with? In any case, you get a lunch break, right? That's a good half hour to an hour. Everybody poops. You can cram a couple minutes in there. And you can always unwind with it for a little bit after you get into bed.

Right. But I've already gone on record as saying I'm not buying Cybertron repaints, Universe or not. Original molds yes, Classics repaints depending on the class/price, and I might consider repaints from other series. But I got back into Transformers when Classics hit, at the tail end of Cybertron, and any Cybertron molds I wanted I already picked up.

So my wife drags me to Wal-Mart today to look at exercise bikes. I wasn't real interested in going, as my Wal-Mart is pretty good on Animated, but way behind on Universe. But the toy section was between the door and sporting goods, and there in the main aisle is a display with Classics/Movie/Animated Bumblebee three-pack and some Wal-Mart exclusive "Movie" toys. I put the "Movie" in quotes because three of them were repaints of Cybertron toys, but one of them was Crash... er, "Fracture," a Gobots-inspired repaint of Classics Mirage. And it was love at first sight. I know Mirage was kind of a shelfwarmer around here (Target had a bunch on clearance down to $5), but like many of you I loved the mold. Sure, he had a little kibble on his back, but he was a slick upgrade to G1 favorite and one of the most poseable Transformers I've owned. As Fracture, the toy is still great, although her waist seems a little loose. The black and red do make a nice contrast to Mirage's blue, and I'm all for adding more Decepticons to the ranks. As Crasher, though, you almost need to be told in advance that she's supposed to be a homage. Yeah, they gave her a pink face, but it's still Mirage's face. Maybe if they'd put more black around her eyes and cheeks? Also, while it probably would have made for a much more boring toy, the red's a little out of place and there's too much white, to say nothing of the fact that her alt mode doesn't look a thing like a Porsche 956. On the whole, I'd say she's worth the buy. If you're going to have a repaint, Classics Mirage is a good figure to repaint. And while there's still some G1 characters I'm hoping to see with new molds in the Classics/Universe line (Jazz, Wheeljack, Shockwave, and Motormaster all spring to mind). And as much as I love Transformers, I grew up pretty poor and had a lot more Gobots, so I actually wouldn't mind seeing the other five main Gobots (Leader-1, Scooter, Turbo, Cy-Kill, and Cop-Tur) turn up at some point, even if they are repaints. Heck, the Blades toy I passed on as a repaint (and will probably pass on as Springer again) I might have bought if they'd painted him blue and called him Cop-Tur.

The animated one just hit when Transformers did. Might not be as exciting to most of you, but I had the Ultimate Avengers and Dr. Strange DVDs, so I wanted Iron Man too. Marvel's animated films have been consistently excellent. Even Next Avengers, which I rented, turned out to be way better than I thought it would be. I might just pick it up now too.

*Kyle voice* Really? Really? I mean, to each his own, but I thought Miami Vice was awful.

Carrier?

While I'm not saying that couldn't contribute to the problem, it can't be the sole cause. My PS3's hooked up using wired ethernet.

I think IE users who have, for whatever reason, decided against Firefox of Opera, might find Chrome fast enough for slick enough to finally consider switching. I think Firefox users, though, might see the potential in Chrome but are unlikely to switch. As for Safari users... if they haven't switched the Firefox or Camino yet, they're not likely to do so now.

I've got the same 60GB unit. I wasn't downloading anything at the time. Like I said, my firmware was out-of-date (stupid incremental firmware updates every two weeks...), so I'm hoping that was the issue. I just really wanted to play the movie, you know, so I didn't feel like updating then. I'm updating now, though. I'll report back when it's done. EDIT: Update's done. Transformers still starts with a loading screen, which was followed by a second loading screen, but the who thing took 5-10 seconds. While this might sound bad considering that most Blu-rays didn't need any load times on my PS3, I should point out two things: 1.) The HD-DVD had the same loading screen. At least on the 360 player. 2.) 5-10 seconds is a huge improvement over the pre-update load times. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was between 5-10 minutes. It was going on so long that I was honestly on Google looking if there was any known issues playing Transformers on the PS3, or if I had a defective disc.